On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 02:17:53PM -0700, Erik Steffl wrote:
> "Noah L. Meyerhans" wrote:
> >
> > Hey all. I am considering purchasing some kind of small portable mp3
> > player, but I don't want to get one that can only download its songs
> > from a Windows box. I know that there's kernel support for a USB link
> > to a Diamond Rio 500 (and later models?). But it seems like there are
> > better players out there (i.e. players with more memory). Does anybody
> > here own such a device? Which ones can talk to Linux?
>
> I have my eyes set on http://pjbox.com/ with 20GB HD, it was reported
> as working well with linux. It's quite expensive but they also have
> cheaper 6GB version. It looks like it's fairly good technically, it has
> 10min. memory (so the HD can sleep longer = longer battery life)...
I have a pjbox and love it. (The pjbox is why I moved to 2.4 kernels in
the 'pre' somethings days...)
Mine is the 6G model (and not backlit :()), but one of these days I'll
get around to mailing off for a 20G drive to upgrade it.
It works great... The design is slick, the quality is slick, the only
crappy thing is that the marketing side is sorta chintzy (it comes in an
UGLY 2-color printed box, the manual is silly, the '6G' on the box is
just a sticker...). But, given the choice between good
marketing/packaging and good design/construction, um, perhaps (bringing
this on topic :)), Windows vs Linux is a good metaphor. :)
The tools to fondle the pjbox are sorta incomplete, but work well (it's
trivial to move mp3's to the pjbox, slightly tricky to delete them --
you download the "table of contents" to a text file, delete the items
from that file, and then upload the TOC.... you can also fix typos in
names of files this way :)). There is a GNOMEish thingie to play with
the pjbox, but I tend to just move things to it and leave them there and
haven't been too bothered. :)
The coolest thing about the pjbox is it is TINY. It is about the size
of a SMALL cassette player, and if I wear a shirt with pockets, it can
fit in my shirt pocket.
It -is- more expensive than others like the Nomad (which Creatve refuses
to support on Linux). But it's also about half the size of the Nomad
(which is HUGE... why they made it look like a CD player, I dunno). But
good scotch costs more than the cheap junk..... and, um, is a lot
better, too. In this case, you very much get what you pay for.
--
CueCat decoder .signature by Larry Wall:
#!/usr/bin/perl -n
printf "Serial: %s Type: %s Code: %s\n", map { tr/a-zA-Z0-9+-/ -_/; $_ = unpack
'u', chr(32 + length()*3/4) . $_; s/\0+$//; $_ ^= "C" x length; } /\.([^.]+)/g;
